Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (142 page)
Read Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan Online
Authors: Herbert P. Bix
Tags: #General, #History, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #World War II
Moreover, although the Diet had enacted an Imperial House Law in 1947, the new law resembled the old even in name, and was drafted simply by deleting from the original those articles that could be construed as contradicting the 1947 constitution, such as the system of “era names” and the “great food-offering ceremony.” An attempt to insert a clause on the emperor's abdication was rejected in the Diet. The new Imperial House Law was no longer on a par with the constitution as the old had been. Yet its existence allowed some scholars to argue that precisely because of its system of hereditary succession to the throne, Japan had an unwritten constitution in addition and prior to the Constitution of Japan.
97
The new constitution also generated problems that were to beset Japan for the remainder of the twentieth century. One such problem was the great divide between the concept of the state held by Japan's political rulers in 1946â47, and the modern secular, demilitarized, civil state concept enshrined in the new constitution, in conformity with the wishes and aspirations of most Japanese.
98
The political elites had not been the original drafters of the constitution they were duty bound to implement. Like Hirohito, they too did not believe in many of its ideals, including especially the notion of the demilitarized state and the principle of the separation of politics and religion.
The Constitution of Japan also left unresolved the problem of the symbol monarchy's place in Japanese national identity. How were the inherently incompatible principles of monarchy and democracy to be reconciled? How were Japanese citizens supposed to regard their formerly divine emperor who remained on his throne, though now only a “symbol,” and had never accepted responsibility for his earlier behavior? Were they to pretend that no conflict existed?
The answers to these questions changed as historical circumstances changed. But at the rebirth of the monarchy in February-March 1946, around the time the lists of the war crimes indictees were being settled and the emperor and his aides were preparing his defense, Vice Grand Chamberlain Kinoshita gave an interview to the editor of the magazine
Ch
ry
. When asked what Hirohito thought about the democratization of Japan, Kinoshita answered,
His majesty thinks that to democratize Japan is to carry out thoroughly the spirit of the imperial house ever since antiquity. That is to say, for the emperor the heart of the imperial house is the heart of the people, and the way to democratize Japan is to make this spirit thoroughgoing.
Question
: In order for us to ask the heart of the imperial house to become the people's heart, I think, first, that the political form has to be one that allows the heart of the people to develop.
Kinoshita
: Indeed, yes. The imperial house has to become the spiritual center of the people rather than the center of politics. His majesty the emperor will ensure that politics by the people for the people is not wiped out from this country.
Question
: From the form, it seems as though the emperor's powers of state might be narrowed. But in reality they will actually be more fully expanded.
Kinoshita
: Yes, indeed.
99
E
mperor Hirohito had known as early as 1942 that the trial of major war criminals was an official Allied war aim.
1
In November 1943 the Moscow Declaration had confirmed the point. The Potsdam Declaration of July 1945 had reiterated it; and the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), signed in London on August 8, 1945, definitively stated Allied policy toward war criminals.
2
Thus on August 9â10, when the time came for him and the leaders of the government to consider capitulation, the issue of war crimes was of serious concern. That concern deepened on September 11, 1945, when MacArthur ordered the arrest and imprisonment of the first batch of suspected war criminals, including the emperor's favorite prime ministerâso hated by the Japanese people not only for brutal repression by the military police under his control but for the unfair way in which food rationing was carried outâGeneral Tj.
Quite alarmed at this risk to the ruling elites, the Higashikuni cabinet immediately voted to seize the initiative from the Allies by convening an independent Japanese war crimes tribunal. Hirohito was not pleased. If war criminals were punished under national law, in his name, he would be placed in a contradictory position and deeply embarrassed. Up to this time Higashikuni had been seeing the emperor daily; abruptly his audiences were reduced. Nevertheless, the next day Foreign Minister Shigemitsu requested GHQ's permission to hold independent trials. GHQ refused.
3
There would
be no official Japanese war crimes trial, no participation by Japanese judges on the bench in the Tokyo trial, and no trial of crimes committed by Japanese troops against other Japanese. The dirty work would be left to foreigners.
MacArthur personally found the prosecution of war criminals distasteful. Get-the-trials-over-with-quickly was his principle, and he was careless about and indifferent to abuses arising from GHQ's loosely defined and sparse rules of evidence and procedure. When he tried the surrendered Japanese generals who had commanded against him in the PhilippinesâHomma Masaharu and Yamashita Tomoyukiâjustice was swift. After the trial, conviction, and sentencing to death of both men for failing to take all measures to prevent troops under their command from committing atrocities, two U.S. Supreme Court justices sharply criticized the procedures followed by the military commissions in the Philippines and the spirit of revenge that informed them. MacArthur, obviously angered, fired back: “Those who would oppose such an honest method can only be a minorityâ¦no sophistry can confine justice to any [particular] form. It is a quality. Its purity lies in its purpose, not in its detail. The rules of war, and military lawâ¦have always proved sufficiently flexible to accomplish justice within the strict limits of morality.”
4
MacArthur confirmed both death sentences and later wrote that “the remaining United States cases of this kind were tried by the International tribunal in Tokyo.” For him there appeared to be little difference between an American military commission and an international war crimes tribunal.
5
I
Brigadier General Fellers had joined MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Command in Australia in late 1943, after having worked for a year in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor of the CIA. Immediately on landing in Japan (in the same plane that car
ried MacArthur), Fellers went to work to protect Hirohito from the role he had played during and at the end of the war. Fellers's overriding goals were to confirm the effectiveness of his own wartime propaganda program, and, at the same time, to shield Hirohito from standing trial.
Fellers conducted private interrogations of about forty Japanese war leaders, including many who would later be charged as the most important Class A war criminals. His interrogations were carried out mainly in visits to Sugamo Prison in Tokyo over a five-month periodâSeptember 22, 1945, to March 6, 1946âthrough two interpreters. Fellers's activities placed all the major war criminal suspects on alert as to GHQ's specific concerns, and allowed them to coordinate their stories so that the emperor would be spared from indictment.
6
Thus, at the same time the prosecuting attorneys were developing evidence to be used in trying these people, Fellers was inadvertently helping them. Soon the prosecuting attorneys found the war leaders all saying virtually the same thing. The emperor had acted heroically and single-handedly to end the war. This theme (unknown to them) coincided with Fellers's goal of demonstrating the effectiveness of his own propaganda campaign against Japan.
Equally helpful to Japan's wartime leaders in protecting Hirohito were the interviews conducted by civilian and military members of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) between late September and December 1945. The purposes of the Survey were to assess the effectiveness of aerial bombardment on Japan's decision to surrender, and the impact of the atomic bombs in particular. USSBS members also sought to fathom the workings of Japan's wartime political system. Needless to say top Japanese political and military leaders, such as Privy Seal Kido; former prime ministers Konoe, Yonai, and Suzuki Kantar; as well as Suzuki's secretary Sakomizu, Kido's secretary Matsudaira Yasumasa, and Adm. Takagi Skichi, viewed their interactions with the survey as a way of pro
tecting the
kokutai.
Extremely cooperative in answering questions, they became the main source of evidence on the surrender process and were able to use their interrogations to shape official American perceptions of Hirohito's role in ending the war.
7
On the same day Fellers concluded his private interrogations of the indicted, he summoned Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa to his office in the Dai Ichi Life Insurance Building. Yonai had recently served as navy minister in the Higashikuni cabinet and had met MacArthur.
8
On March 6, 1946, Yonai and his interpreter, Mizota Shichi, went to Fellers's office and were told that some Allied countries, particularly the Soviet Union, wanted to punish the emperor as a war criminal:
To counter this situation, it would be most convenient if the Japanese side could prove to us that the emperor is completely blameless. I think the forthcoming trials offer the best opportunity to do that. Tj, in particular, should be made to bear all responsibility at his trial. In other words, I want you to have Tjsay as follows:
“At the imperial conference prior to the start of the war, I had already decided to push for war even if his majesty the emperor was against going to war with the United States.”
9